


Roads to Safe Places

by DachOsmin



Category: Extraction (2020)
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, Gay Bar, Hook-Up, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Protectiveness, and they were ROOMMATES
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:13:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25329853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DachOsmin/pseuds/DachOsmin
Summary: After Dhaka, Ovi Majahan goes to uni, gets kissed, and hires a hitman. Not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Ovi Mahajan/Tyler Rake
Comments: 11
Kudos: 77
Collections: Little Black Dress Exchange 2020





	Roads to Safe Places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).



After the kidnapping and the rescue, the torture and the death, Ovi goes home. He spends a few days in various clinics: the nurses bandage his hurts and cluck over him like he’s a child, the doctors prod at him and mutter to each other in voices too quiet for him to make out. The hospital corridors feel like some kind of underworld; the sterile walls and bluish cast of the fluorescents make him question whether he really did escape Dhaka alive.

His discharge, and the bright sun as he steps out of the hospital doors, come as something of a shock. Apparently he’s not dead after all, and against all odds is cleared to return to the land of the living.

He puts on his school uniform again, returns to the familiar hallways and classrooms of his old life, but none of it quite fits anymore. Everything seems to exist at a remove, as if there were a barrier of glass or mist between him and the rest of the world. It’s all changed, only he knows he’s the one changed, knows it from the way his friends treat him differently now: carefully, as if they’re afraid he’ll break. And sometimes fearfully too, when they think he isn’t looking.

At least they stop pressuring him to talk to girls, even if it’s only because they assume that he’s traumatized.

It’s not that he’s _not_ traumatized. He is definitely, absolutely traumatized. He wakes up screaming every night at first, his sheets soaked with sweat and his chest heaving like he’s just run a marathon. But time dulls what the doctors can’t heal, and the worst of the dreams came less and less frequently: once a week, once a month, less. Ovi tries to pretend it was all only ever a nightmare, that this world is the real one, that he will never again feel as terrified or as helpless as he did then. Some of the time he even succeeds.

And then, one morning eight months later, a call from a blocked number lights up his phone.

Ovi’s working on his homework in his room when it happens. He answers the phone unthinkingly; muscle memory at work as he accepts the call and lifts the phone to his ear.

Silence on the other line, and for a second he wonders if it’s a robocall or a prank. “Hello?”

An almost imperceptible exhale. And then: “It’s Nik.”

Ovi blinks against his shock and the sudden hammering in his chest. “What—”

“He’s alive.” Her voice is clipped, quiet, utterly at odds with what she’s telling him. Three words, but with enough meaning packed into them to completely upend the fragile peace he’s built, to remind him that it all really happened, it was never just a dream, and no matter how hard he pretends he can never go back to who he was before. Before he knew Tyler. Tyler…

“Asif’s men pulled him from the river,” Nik continues in a matter-of-fact monotone, as if she hasn’t just unmade and reshaped Ovi’s world. “We managed to get him out of Dhaka last night.”

Alive, alive, alive: Ovi could burst with it. He swallows around the pained tightness in his throat. Nik must have known Tyler was alive for weeks, for months. She’d kept the news from him until he’d been rescued, most likely. But Ovi can’t begin to dredge up any anger at the deceit, because _Tyler is alive._

“Ovi?” Nik asks.

Right, right, he needs to say something. “Can I—can I talk to him?” he asks.

“No,” she says, and the gentleness in her voice feels like the worst kind of cruelty. “That’s not a good idea. But he wants you to know that he’s safe.”

She hangs up before he can reply, and Ovi is left with no evidence that the conversation even happened, excepting the deafening roar in his ears.

Tyler is alive.

More than anything Ovi wants to see him in the flesh. He wants living, breathing proof that the conversation with Nik wasn’t just another dream. He wants to touch Tyler, feel the heat of his skin, hear the beating of his heart. He wants to wrap Tyler in his arms as tightly as he can and never, ever, let him go.

But as it turns out, he doesn’t see Tyler again for a lifetime.

***

Well. A few years. But it feels like a lifetime.

Ovi grows up in the meantime: comes into his height, gets muscles and a beard, and generally looks less like a skinny kid every time he looks in the mirror.

He spends the intervening years setting his affairs in order, preparing himself for the day he will have to leave Mumbai. He loves his city: the bright lights, the cool rains and the sultry afternoons. But it’s a place where he will always be his father’s son, replete with a target of appropriate size on his back. He’s not sure which would be worse: to spend his life cloistered and afraid of more assassins and kidnappers, or to become enough like his father that he might deserve that fate.

So instead he spends his days studying his textbooks diligently or else playing Bach and Beethoven, Mozart and Liszt. He practices sonatas and concertos until his wrists ache and the melodies drift into his sleep, and then he wakes up and does it all over again.

At night he plays a different sort of music, tapping inquiries into his laptop about all sorts of disreputable things. He goes to the darker parts of the internet, worms his way into circles where a schoolboy has no business being. And there he asks questions, veiled ones after he’s lurked long enough to learn the appropriate lingo. They all boil down to the same thing: if one, completely hypothetically, wished to hire a man with a gun ( _a particular man_ , he doesn’t say, _an Australian with a lopsided smile that lights up his face, and wide shoulders, and hands that feel like safety when they rest atop a head_ ) how would one go about it?

He gets cursed out for a narc a few times at first, and there’s a scare with Interpol, but by the time he’s halfway through his last year of school he gets what he’s after: his phone buzzing on his bedside table late at night, the call once again coming from a restricted number.

He picks it up and stares at the display for a second. He can just make out his own wide eyes reflected in the black screen. It rings again. Swallowing, he accepts the call and presses the phone to his ear.

“Someone,” Nik bites out, “has been asking entirely too many questions.”

He refuses to feel chastened by this. “It wouldn’t have been necessary if you’d left a number where I could call you back,” he points out.

“We didn’t _want_ you to call,” she says. “You were supposed to leave this all behind you.”

 _We_. Ah. He ignores the twist in his chest because who Tyler is “we” with is none of his business. He shifts the phone to his other shoulder. “How is he?”

A laden silence on the line; he only knows it’s still live because he can hear, very faintly, the cadence of her breathing. “Alive,” she says at last. “As well as can be expected, given the circumstances.”

Ovi forces down the twinge of pain at that. How well could anyone be, after months spent in Amir Asif’s loving care? Hell, how well had he been even before that?

There are a million questions he wants to ask. But it’s not her lips he wants to hear the answers on. So instead he cuts straight to the point. “Where is he?”

She laughs. “I’m not—”

“I want to hire him.”

That gets her attention, alright. “You want to—for _what_?”

He tells her.

Silence. And then a long, slow exhale. “I suppose it’ll be good for him,” she says with a sigh. “Get a pen out.”

***

The trip to Australia is a special kind of agony. The plane ride itself is nice enough; he’d gone with first class, after all. But he can’t sit still; his fingers tap melodies into his thighs as he checks and rechecks the flight progress on the tv. It’s stupid, really—he’s waited all these years; what’s a few hours more?

Yet somehow it feels all the more unbearable: to be so, so close, but not quite there yet, hurts more than the years of distance ever did.

When the plane lands he doesn’t bother sticking around, just rents a car and drives out into the bush. Towards Tyler.

It’s a long drive. He never really appreciated how big Australia is before getting there. The sky is vaster than anything he’s ever seen before, and the sun beating down on the roof of the car feels both closer and more remote than the one at home. Even the air smells different.

His GPS tells him quite sternly that this is a two-day drive; he ignores it. Instead he drives through the night. His highbeams are the only lights piercing the darkness other than the stars: more stars than he’s ever seen in his life, more stars than he can count, more stars than sky in between, really.

Dawn breaks over the land orange and golden, and as much as it takes his breath away, he doesn’t stop to look. Because he’s almost there.

The cabin appears on the horizon right where Nik told him it would be. He parks a ways away and exits the car. His palms are sweat-soaked; he wipes them on his jeans and forces himself to take a step forward, then another.

He doesn’t see anyone around, except for a few chickens pecking at the dirt. But still, he knows Tyler had to notice the car pulling up, is probably watching him now. There—a shadow moving across the window, present and then absent again.

It’s not until he’s close enough that his face would be clearly visible to anyone inside the cabin that the door creaks open. And as it does, Ovi is seized with all the fears he’s played over to himself during the flight and the drive: it won’t be him, or it will be and he’ll be unrecognizable, or he’ll be the same but won’t recognize Ovi.

But then a figure stumbles over the threshold and out of the cabin, and Ovi’s stomach flips over because it’s him, it’s him, it’s really him. He looks older, grimmer, more worn—but still unmistakably himself.

“Kid,” Tyler whispers. “Why are you here?”

Ovi opens his mouth and closes it, stumbling over his thoughts. He’d planned what he was going to say, written a whole speech in his head on the plane ride over. But now that he’s here all the words have deserted him.

“Kid,” Tyler says again, and it pierces Ovi, how helpless he sounds.

Right, he needs to say something. Even if it’s not the speech, something is better than nothing. So he goes with the truth. “I want to hire you.”

Tyler blanches. “Who’s after you?” he asks as he twists around, scanning the horizon, fingers twitching like they’re hungry for a trigger. It’s the look of a man hunted.

“No, that’s not…” Damn, but he’d gone about this all wrong. “No one’s after me,” he says. “It’s only I’m moving to London, for uni, and I thought it might be a good idea to have a bodyguard. After what happened.”

Tyler blinks. “Your father isn’t giving you a detail?”

“No,” Ovi says, pushing down the now-familiar hurt. “He kind of disowned me when I told him I was gay.” It’s not until he says it that he realizes that Tyler could react the same way: laugh or curse and repeat all those words that had dripped from his father’s lips: poof and fairy and no-son-of-mine.

But Tyler doesn’t say any of that, just blinks, and then nods. “That would do it.” And then he goes back to staring at Ovi.

“I can still pay you,” Ovi says, scuffing the tip of his shoe in the dirt. “There’s a trust, and there’s money, mostly from my mother’s family, and he can’t touch it since I’m eighteen now…” He realizes he’s babbling and falls silent.

“You’re eighteen?”

Tyler probably still sees him as a kid. “Yeah,” he says. “As of today, actually.”

“Jesus.” Tyler’s eyebrows fly up. “You’re spending your birthday in the middle of nowhere trying to hire a hitman?”

Ovi can’t help but smile. “Imagine how much worse it will be if the hitman says no.”

Tyler stares at him for a minute longer, eyes narrowed like he’s doing calculations in his head. Then he snorts and waves Ovi over, towards the entrance of the cabin. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and Ovi is blindsided by it: how his chest feels full to the brim with some emotion he can’t begin to place.

***

They change planes in Perth, fly to Doha and then into Heathrow. Tyler is a silent presence next to him throughout the trip, looking every inch the badass bodyguard in mirrored sunglasses and leather jacket.

It’s a long trip and Ovi’s body already has no idea what time zone it’s supposed to be in. He ends up falling asleep somewhere over Turkey, and wakes up curled against Tyler’s side when the plane lands at Heathrow with head resting atop Tyler’s shoulder. It should be supremely awkward, but somehow it’s not; as Ovi blinks the sleep from his bleary eyes Tyler gives him a quiet grin and ruffles his mussed up hair. “Let’s go, then.”

***

They’re in a hotel for a few days before Ovi manages to buy a small flat not too far from campus. It’s ridiculously expensive, of course, but Ovi has money to burn these days.

Tyler safety proofs the flat right away, muttering something about rocket launchers as he hammers steel reinforcements into the window frames. Ovi decorates it with things he’s brought from home, and buys an Italian leather dog bed on amazon for Delilah, who Ovi had insisted come with them. (The chickens were staying with Tyler’s neighbor, although Ovi had been charmed by them to the point that he’d offered to bring them along too. Tyler had vetoed the idea).

The flat is bright and airy, with a bedroom for each of them and a small office he plans on fitting with an upright piano. There’s an amazing kitchen that Ovi resigns himself to going unused; he’s always had a cook and can’t even make tea by himself. They’ll have to order in, or he could hire someone else once he gets to know the area.

But on his first day of school he wakes up to a heavenly smell, and when he stumbles into the kitchen in his pajamas he sees Tyler in a tank top laboring over the stove. He spends a second blinking the sleep from his eyes, and then another second gaping at Tyler’s bare arms, but then gets his wits back enough to protest. “Tyler—stop.”

Tyler turns around, spatula raised quizzically. “You don’t like pikelets?”

“No—I mean yes, I do—but this isn’t what I’m paying you for.”

Tyler considers this for a moment, shrugs, and turns back to the stove. “I’ll add it to the invoice.”

He tries to think up a proper response to that, but he’s still half awake and Tyler is already loading a plate up and setting it before him, and there’s really nothing else he can do but eat.

The pikelets taste delicious.

***

Ovi likes uni.

His academic courses are fine, but what he really loves are his music classes. His passion for piano has never gone away; even after all these years he remembers tapping Mozart onto his kneecap while surrounded by the staccato of gunfire.

He tries to channel the memories of that time—the terror, the pain, the fear, and Tyler Tyler Tyler—into his music. It must work somewhat; his classmates say he plays like a man possessed.

He likes them well enough too, although he doesn’t make more than casual friends with anyone. There’s the cultural barrier, which would be a small enough thing if it wasn’t for the other barrier looming behind it, made up of all the things he can’t talk about: his family and his money and, of course, Tyler.

They mean well. They wink at Ovi at him when they catch Tyler idling by the exit of the lecture hall with take out, or pulling up to campus in the convertible that Ovi had bought himself in a fit of pique. Ovi knows they all assume Tyler’s his sugar daddy; he lets them make the assumption. “I got my nice things from my hot older boyfriend” is easier to swallow than “I got my nice things from my father’s drug empire, and that’s a homicidal mercenary, not my boyfriend, though I do kind of wish he’d fuck me into the mattress.”

Because that’s the thing.

Living in the same flat as Tyler makes it abundantly clear that Ovi _does_ want Tyler to fuck him into the mattress. It’s maddening: he feels like he’s a kid in the most amazing candy store where he’s allowed to touch absolutely nothing. He can’t help but stare at Tyler’s bare arms as he does pull ups off the door lintels, or gawk at swell of Tyler’s ass as he cooks in the morning.

Oh, and then there are the showers.

The flat is on the older side; their two bedrooms share a single bathroom and Ovi can hear the sound of water running even with both the bathroom and his bedroom doors closed. His mind, traitor that it is, conjures up all sorts of delightful images of Tyler sluicing water through his hair and over his body. He usually makes himself play scales at that point to distract himself, since he can’t take a cold shower. Because Tyler is in the shower. Naked, his brain helpfully supplies.

A few weeks after they’ve moved in, Ovi’s imagination gets a helping hand. He’s studying in his bedroom with headphones on when he decides to grab a snack from the kitchen. Except when he opens the door to the hallway, he’s greeted by the sight of Tyler coming out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel.

He stops dead in his tracks. Stares. Fuck, his mouth might be hanging open. And he doesn’t care.

Because Tyler is standing in front of him looking like every sinful thought he’s ever had. The towel slung low on his hips does nothing to hide the angled lines of his hips and the hint of hair leading down from his navel. And his skin, fuck, his skin. Scars and tattoos swirl over him like music notes, and more than anything Ovi wants to read the melody writ there, not just with his eyes but with his hands and his tongue, too. As he watches, a single rivulet of water trickles down the swell of his chest to bead at the tip of his nipple.

“You alright, kid?” Tyler asks. He’s got a concerned expression on his face, and Ovi realizes he’s staring like a serial killer or something.

“Yeah just fine.” He ducks his face, which he’s sure is madder-red by now. “Thinking of taking a shower too, that’s all. Since it’s, uh, hot. Outside, that is.”

Tyler offers him a brisk nod. “Used up most of the hot water, but there’s still some left.”

Ovi nods and flees into the bathroom. Tyler was right: there is hot water left. But Ovi turns it cold instead.

***

It’s after the shower incident that the dreams start.

Ovi’s had dreams with Tyler in them for years. But they used to be mainly nightmares, full of the fury of concussion grenades and the staccato of gunfire. The plot didn’t change much: he’d sprint at Tyler’s side as they were pursued down endless streets, and the dreams always ended in a hail of bullets before they managed to find their way free.

The new dreams are not like those dreams. There’s no gunfire and no car crashes. Really, the only constant is Tyler.

But Tyler plays a very different role.

Yeah, okay, Ovi can admit it. They’re sex dreams.

Sometimes dream-Tyler comes to him in his room, other times they’re back in Mumbai, and sometimes they’re in Dhaka. The dreams tend to start in medias res: suddenly there are thick calloused hands roving over his body, or sometimes a voice brushing at his ear, whispering “I want you.” And then Tyler touches him everywhere, takes him apart, fucks him in every configuration of hands and mouths and cocks that Ovi’s sleeping brain can think up.

It’s an accident, the first time Ovi acts on it. It’s a quiet Sunday morning; he’s lying in bed on the line between sleep and wakefulness. His dreams fit the atmosphere; they’re nothing but a series of hazy snapshots of emotion and sensation: Tyler’s lips mouthing softly at his neck, Tyler’s hands carding through his hair, Tyler’s length sliding against his own. Ovi feels deliciously warm; as pleasure builds in his stomach, he slips his hand between his legs, toying with himself absentmindedly. With a quiet sigh, he comes to the thought of Tyler pressing kisses to his forehead, and drifts off back to sleep.

When he wakes to bright sunshine and dried come on his thighs later that morning, he knows he’s royally fucked.

***

He needs to get laid, is what he needs. By Tyler, his treacherous brain supplies. Not by Tyler. By literally anyone else. Granted, he’s never actually had sex before, but there has to be some guy that would be willing to sleep with him. A club, he’ll go to a club.

That Friday after class, he dumps his backpack on the floor of the kitchen and turns to face Tyler, who’s grilling something on the stove. “I’m going out tonight,” he says with a confidence utterly at odds with the butterflies in his stomach.

Tyler glances up at him. “Right,” he says with a decisive nod. “I’ll get ready after I finish these.”

Ovi brain short circuits at the thought of Tyler at a gay bar. Shirtless perhaps, bathed in sweat or glitter, his muscles writhing as he undulates on the dance floor. “No!” he squeaks. “No need for that. I’ll go by myself.”

Tyler sets down the spatula with a frown. “I’m your bodyguard. You are paying me to guard you.”

“And tonight, I’m paying you to sit it out,” Ovi says, glaring at the spot just above Tyler’s head. “That’s an order,” he hastens to add.

Tyler backs down, but by the tense set of his shoulders as he turns back to the stove, he’s not happy about it. Ovi shoves down the guilt at that; he’s not supposed to care what Tyler thinks. Tyler’s not his friend; Tyler absolutely isn’t hurt that Ovi doesn’t want him around. If he’s displeased, it’s for professional reasons, nothing more.

“I’ll be back by midnight,” he says with a confidence he doesn’t feel, and hightails it out of the room as fast as he can without running.

***

Soon after hightailing it to the nearest gay club, Ovi admits to himself that this whole thing was a pretty shitty idea. The loud music and the strobing lights give him flashbacks to the night he was kidnapped, and the loud beat of the bass line sounds uncomfortably like gunfire.

Every time he considers going up to a guy to introduce himself his palms start to sweat. The result is that an hour and a half later he’s talked to exactly no one while managing to crush three shitty rail drinks in fairly quick succession.

He’s on the verge of leaving when he suddenly feels a presence sit down at the bar next to him. He turns, ready to say something perfectly inane. But then he sees who has sat down next to him and his breath catches, because holy shit. The guy is tall, with blue eyes and spiky blonde hair. He’s wearing a tank top that’s sinfully tight, showing off his broad shoulders and sculpted pecs to wonderful affect. And he’s looking at Ovi like he wants to eat him up.

“Hey there,” Ovi manages to croak, and immediately wants to die. Hey there? Really?

The man’s eyes crinkle in a smile. “The name’s Richard. Can I get you a drink?”

Holy fucking shit. He’s got an Australian accent. Ovi’s going to come in his pants or cry, he isn’t sure which.

He needs to calm down. This isn’t Tyler. This isn’t Tyler, and it’s not that he was ever looking for Tyler here, the whole point of being here was to get away from Tyler, but Ovi is drunk and his skin wants to be touched and the man’s eyes on him feel like attention and lust and acknowledgement, and it seems like it’s been forever and a day since he had any of those things.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay.”

One drink becomes two becomes three. Richard laughs at all his drunken jokes, leaning closer and closer so that they’re breathing each other’s air, hot and humid with alcohol and want. Their thighs press together; even with two pairs of jeans between their skin Ovi feels the heat like a brand where they touch.

At some point Richard lays a hand on the top of Ovi’s thigh, and Ovi doesn’t push it away. When his hand begins to creep higher, higher, Ovi squirms in his seat. “Not here,” he murmurs, flushing.

Richard laughs low in his throat, a heady rumbling sound. “Then come on.”

They end up making out in the alley behind the club. It’s good, it’s so fucking good. Ovi moans as Richard jams his tongue into Ovi’s mouth Fuck, but he should have done this weeks ago.

Richard’s hands creep lower, sliding down his back, worming their way under his shirt. Ovi whines as Richard tweaks at his nipples, rakes the tips of his nails over his rib cage. 

It’s good, it’s so good, his body is lit up like a neon sign, and every touch feels like a spark. It’s so good, but—but—

But.

So it’s not that he’s a romantic or anything, but something still shies away from the idea that his first time is going to be like this: in a filthy alley stuffed with trash and rat turds, in the hands of some stranger he doesn’t even know the last name of.

he doesn’t want it to be like this, he wants it to be with—

Well. Someone else.

“Hey,” he says, panting. “I—

Richard captures his mouth in another kiss, licking and biting at his open mouth, swallowing the rest of his words.

It takes all his concentration, but Ovi manages to wrench his head away and shove Richard back. “I don’t,” he says, fighting against the haze of the liquor. “I don’t think I want to do this.”

That gets Richard’s attention at least; he staggers on unsteady feet, his arms out for balance and an incredulous expression on his face. “Seriously? You lead me on like that?”

“I didn’t—I didn’t mean to—"

“You were just deep throating my tongue, man,” Richard says with an incredulous chuckle. “Stop playing hard to get; come here—”

He makes a drunken swipe at Ovi, fingers outstretched, greedy. Ovi manages to stumble backwards, almost tripping over a bit of debris before he manages to steady himself on the side of one of the dumpsters.

When he looks up, Richard is looming over him, eyes bright with rage and lust. The fear finally manages to pierce through the veil of the liquor, and it hits Ovi deep in the pit of his stomach: he fucked up this time, he fucked up _bad._

He could run, maybe? But he’s drunk and dizzy and he has no idea how to get home from here without calling an uber. Or, or, he could fight, except what a joke; Richard could down him with a single punch. Maybe he could make it back into the club if he ducks under Richard’s arm?

Before he can try any of those things, he hears a crunch of gravel from somewhere behind him.

“He said he didn’t want to fuck you, mate,” someone growls. And then Tyler is stepping out of the shadows on the far side of the alley, his face as grave as a stone statue’s.

Richard turns towards him with a scowl. “Who the fuck are you?”

Richard and Tyler face each other, sizing each other up. And when Ovi sees it it’s the worst thing: the moment Tyler realizes he may as well be looking in a mirror. Recognition ripples over his face, and something Ovi can’t identify. Tyler’s eyes flick back towards Ovi, and he opens his mouth to say something.

Whatever he’d been planning on saying gets cut off because Richard decides this is a good time to take a swipe at Tyler’s head. This goes poorly, since, as Richard quickly learns, there is never a good time to take a swipe at Tyler’s head.

Because yeah, Richard has an inch on Tyler, plus muscles for days: but they’re the sort of muscles you get from doing reps in a gym. He’s probably never been in a real fight. He’s certainly never killed anyone.

Whereas Tyler… is Tyler.

Which is to say: Tyler fucking demolishes him. It’s over so fast it’s almost pathetic. One minute Richard is posturing with his fists up like some boxer in an American sports movie, and the next he’s a pile of limbs on the ground. He doesn’t get a chance to throw a single punch.

Ovi’s still staring down at the moaning pile of Richard when Tyler approaches him and wraps a warm and calloused hand around his wrist. “Time to go.”

Going sounds good; going sounds great. Ovi lets Tyler drag him out of the alley, into the passenger seat of their waiting car. “How did you find me?” he asks as Tyler slides into the driver’s seat.

Tyler doesn’t look at him as he starts the engine. “Cell phone data.” His voice is brusque.

Cell phone data. Ovi considers this, fumbling through the implications. “I didn’t think I gave you permission to hack my cell phone,” he says, taking care not to slur any of his words.

Tyler slams a foot down on the accelerator, and they peel away from the curb with a squeal of tires. “You didn’t.”

So he’d gone around Ovi’s back to track him, then. “We’ll discuss this in the morning,” Ovi says icily, and feels every inch his father. The vodka roils in his stomach; he’s gone from comfortably warm to chill and queasy in the space of a few minutes.

He leans against the window as Tyler drives, watching the blurry streetlights go by. He feels dizzy, his body ungainly and loose. So loose, in fact, that the question slips from his lips before he can help it: “if I’d gone through with it, would you have watched the whole time?”

A sharp inhale from the driver’s seat. “Kid—"

He’s already at rock bottom, so why not dig a little deeper? “Would you have enjoyed it?”

Silence.

Ovi looks over in time to see Tyler’s lips narrow into a hard line. He doesn’t return Ovi’s gaze. “Buckle your seat belt,” Tyler snaps.

***

Ovi wakes up the next day with a foul taste in his mouth and a raging headache brewing in his temples. Hell, what had he been drinking? He manages to crawl out of his bed and stumbles for the hall bathroom. He’s almost to the bathroom door when he happens to glance to the side, towards Tyler’s room.

He stops dead. The door is wide open, and the floor is strewn with items flung hither and thither. His heart does a flip: it looks like there’s been a fight or a struggle. How could he have slept through it?

But then he takes a closer look and realizes it’s worse than a fight: on the far side of the wall are a pair of open suitcases.

“’Scuse me,” Tyler rumbles from behind him, ducking around Ovi to get back into his room.

Ovi stares as Tyler kneels by the suitcases and starts tossing in clothing. “You’re leaving?”

Tyler doesn’t turn. “Planned to, yeah.”

The sick feeling in Ovi’s stomach is no longer from the alcohol alone. Tyler’s disgusted by him, too disgusted to stay. He takes a deep breath and wills his voice steady. “It’s because he looked like you, isn’t it?”

A pause. “No,” Tyler says. “If you won’t let me do my job, there’s no reason for me to stay.”

Ovi feels himself getting angry. “Oh,” he says, “so it’s my fault.”

Tyler doesn’t say anything in return, just slams a pair of jeans into the suitcase like they personally wronged him.”

Fuck, but Ovi can’t just let this happen. He can’t just let Tyler slip away, not again. “The thing is,” Ovi says, stepping into the room, “this doesn’t feel like it’s my fault. This feels like you’re running.”

“I’m not,” Tyler says, but there’s an edge to his voice, and Ovi can see the tension in his shoulder blades where they peek out from beneath his tank top.

“Really?” he asks. “Because you seem to make a habit of running away, and—"

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tyler growls.

Oh, that’s rich. “Tell me, then,” Ovi says, and he can’t help the bitter laugh that bubbles up. “Tell me to my face this isn’t like Afghanistan all over again.”

That does the trick. “Shut the fuck up,” Tyler snarls, standing up so that he looms over Ovi. “Just shut—"

“Is this your son all over again? Am I—"

“You’re not my fucking son,” Tyler spits, and then he’s yanking Ovi into a kiss.

Fuck, but it’s good. Tyler kisses like he fights: it’s brutal and precise and take-no-prisoners, and all Ovi can do is gasp in Tyler’s arms as Tyler kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him. He thinks he could die from how good it feels, he wants this to last forever, wants Tyler’s hands to touch him everywhere, wants Tyler’s hands to take him apart.

And as fast as it began, it’s over; Tyler is pulling away.

Ovi blinks, licks his lips. “Why’d you stop?” he whispers.

It’s funny; Tyler’s got eight inches on him and all the muscles in the world, but right now he looks so, so vulnerable. “You’re a kid,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Ovi raises an eyebrow. “I’m eighteen. I’m old enough to know what I want.”

“There are—there are power differentials—"

Ovi can’t help but laugh. “I’m literally your boss.”

“Yes, but—”

“And this is an order: kiss me again.”

Tyler looks helpless as he leans in. The kiss this time is gentle enough to break Ovi’s heart: dry and close-lipped, like a plea pressed against the corner of his mouth.

“There,” Ovi whispers as Tyler pulls away. “That wasn’t so hard.”

Tyler snorts. “I suppose you want more than just a kiss?”

“You don’t have to if you really don’t want to,” Ovi says, resisting the urge to stare down at his shoes. “But _I_ want to. With you. I’ve been thinking of it for weeks. And dreaming about it. So, if you want to…?”

Tyler sighs. “You’re going to be the death of me,” he says to himself. And then he’s reaching out to wrap Ovi in his delightfully strong arms, lifting him up in the air as if he weighs nothing at all. And for all of his hemming and hawing, Ovi can’t help but notice that Tyler is smiling as he carries Ovi to bed.

***

After Ovi’s had the best (and only) sex of his life, they lie entwined together in the wreckage of Tyler’s bed. Tyler makes a fantastic pillow, and barely grumbles when Ovi traces his scars and tattoos with his fingertips. Once he’s mapped them to his satisfaction, Ovi lays his head on Tyler’s chest and closes his eyes, savoring the steady sound of Tyler’s heartbeat beneath him.

“Christ, you’re cuddly,” Tyler mutters.

“Mmm,” Ovi says. “Make me breakfast in the morning.”

That gets a groan. “Any other orders, your majesty?”

“Mmm.” Ovi pretends to think for a moment. “Stay.”

Tyler’s breath catches. And—“Yeah, okay,” he whispers.


End file.
